Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

[Khaos]

About that hyperspace ramming scene... Holdo missed (kind of).

I'm assuming that Holdo wanted to ram the Supremacy in the centre, the Supremacy is about 60 km wide and she missed by seemingly 8 km off the centre of that ship. Let's also consider that the Supremacy has a height of 4 km.

That means that she would have missed a standard Star Destroyer, she would have also missed the new Resurgence-class Star Destroyer, she would have also missed the siege Dreadnought from the beginning of the TLJ. She would have missed Vader's Executor if it was facing her from the wrong angle.

And even at the right angle, she might have missed it since it certainly isn't 4 km wide at the tip.

I'm sure someone else could play with the assumption of where Holdo's targetting ended up on the Gaussian distribution (or whatever it actually is), and also play with the standard deviation of that distribution; but the tactic doesn't look that good if you're targetting anything reasonably sized unless you don't mind 95% of your fleet ending up halfway across the galaxy before getting a hit.

That's before getting into the discussion about the relative masses of the colliding objects and whether you need to be 757/1000 (or whatever) into the hyperspace transition to work.

 

[VolantRedX]

I don't know why so many people have issues with the lightspeed ram. I mean it seems pretty obvious why it's not used very often, it's a suicide attack that costs you a ship. Why would you ever do it except when you have no other option and don't care if you live or die?

 

[Claudette Savagely]

About that hyperspace ramming scene... Holdo missed (kind of).

I'm assuming that Holdo wanted to ram the Supremacy in the centre, the Supremacy is about 60 km wide and she missed by seemingly 8 km off the centre of that ship. Let's also consider that the Supremacy has a height of 4 km.

That means that she would have missed a standard Star Destroyer, she would have also missed the new Resurgence-class Star Destroyer, she would have also missed the siege Dreadnought from the beginning of the TLJ. She would have missed Vader's Executor if it was facing her from the wrong angle.

And even at the right angle, she might have missed it since it certainly isn't 4 km wide at the tip.

I'm sure someone else could play with the assumption of where Holdo's targetting ended up on the Gaussian distribution (or whatever it actually is), and also play with the standard deviation of that distribution; but the tactic doesn't look that good if you're targetting anything reasonably sized unless you don't mind 95% of your fleet ending up halfway across the galaxy before getting a hit.

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So she missed, except she didn't miss.

???

 

[Vyslanté]

I don't know why so many people have issues with the lightspeed ram. I mean it seems pretty obvious why it's not used very often, it's a suicide attack that costs you a ship. Why would you ever do it except when you have no other option and don't care if you live or die?

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Duct tape the wheel? Have a droid pilot it? Hell, sacrificing one person for an insta kill is a pretty good trade off...

 

[VolantRedX]

Duct tape the wheel? Have a droid pilot it? Hell, sacrificing one person for an insta kill is a pretty good trade off...

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You also need a large ship. That's just a waste of resources. At best it's a mutual kill, so you're basically trading one ship for one of theirs. That isn't viable long term.

 

[Claudette Savagely]

You also need a large ship. That's just a waste of resources. At best it's a mutual kill, so you're basically trading one ship for one of theirs. That isn't viable long term.

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So build ram ships. Take junk freighters, fill them with industrial spoil/slag/rocks and duct tape an R2 unit to the helm. Use those inexplicably omnipresent rebel transports the Alliance loved so much.

The CIS should have just made a shit ton of ram droids instead of bothering with actual naval combatants.

I do not know where people got the idea that you absolutely need a vessel as big as the Raddus to ensure a successful ram against any target whatsoever. The film sure as hell doesn't even come close to implying it.

 

[RoboRenee]

You also need a large ship. That's just a waste of resources. At best it's a mutual kill, so you're basically trading one ship for one of theirs. That isn't viable long term.

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Unless the 'ship' is just a big lump of metal with engines and a hyperdrive and an unhappy B1, in which case it is a comparable resource expenditure to a starfighter minus pilot. A dedicated ramjet craft wouldn't need life support, or guns, or any of the many other things large craft need. Trading the cost of a high-end starfighter for the cost of a star destroyer seems like the sort of shit the CIS would have filled the sky with.

And that's assuming, of course, that this only works with large vessels for some reason. If it's just a function of hyperspace, then much smaller hyperdrive missiles would do correspendingly less damage but would still be the sort of shit I'd expect to see Macross-spammed by every capship in the fleet because that was a lot of bang for the buck.

 

[Shinji117]

You also need a large ship. That's just a waste of resources. At best it's a mutual kill, so you're basically trading one ship for one of theirs. That isn't viable long term.

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Don't need to make it a ship at all. You can strip out all the life support, hangars and everything. Keep shields to stop interception fire, engines for ramming and a plug in port for a astromech to steer and you're good. Build self-guided missiles rather than ships if you want to use the tactic.

That, and the example has the ship trade for more than one, but guess that can be ignored given how if the tactic became popular forces wouldn't group together like that.

 

[Gravitas Hunt]

So she missed, except she didn't miss.

???

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She would have missed on anything much smaller, like the vast majority of possible targets, I believe is the point.

 

[Hayateknight]

People seem to forget that the Order detected her turning the hyper drive on, meaning that if your standard tactic is to do this, the enemy knows what you are doing a good thirty seconds before you do it. Meaning they can, I don't know, blow you the fuck up before you do it.

 

[Shinji117]

People seem to forget that the Order detected her turning the hyper drive on, meaning that if your standard tactic is to do this, the enemy knows what you are doing a good thirty seconds before you do it. Meaning they can, I don't know, blow you the fuck up before you do it.

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The range between "shots from our strongest batteries can't actually do anything to shields besides remind them we exist" and "hyperram fucks you over" seems pretty similar. It's not like the admiral waited for the bad guys to get at point blank range. She turned around, charged her hyperdrive and bam.

 

[Claudette Savagely]

People seem to forget that the Order detected her turning the hyper drive on, meaning that if your standard tactic is to do this, the enemy knows what you are doing a good thirty seconds before you do it. Meaning they can, I don't know, blow you the fuck up before you do it.

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That'd why the Supremacy's enormous energy weapons completely dismantled the Raddus seconds into the chase-

Wait, no, hang on.

That'd be why the escort destroyers smashed the Raddus apart with their missile cannons seconds into the chase-

Wait, no, hang on.

That'd be why the combined fighter strength of the escort group and the Supremacy had enough time to sortie and destroy or disable the Raddus before Holdo so much as completed the turn-

Wait, no, hang on.

Hmm something seems off here.

It's almost like the FO didn't have the range or the weaponry to kill the Raddus before it closed the distance, but that can't be it...

She would have missed on anything much smaller, like the vast majority of possible targets, I believe is the point.

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Given that we have exactly no evidence for the above assertion because @Khaos' whole argument requires her to be aiming for the bow dead on (and at no point is this shown, stated, or implied), this idea is somewhat unconvincing to say the least.

I honestly have no idea why so many people are apparently experiencing difficulty with the notion that Johnson could give us a genuinely fantastic all-time great spectactle, and that it could simultaneously undermine previous stories by puncturing the sense of verisimilitude.

 

[Shinji117]

That'd why the Supremacy's enormous energy weapons completely dismantled the Raddus seconds into the chase-

Wait, no, hang on.

That'd be why the escort destroyers smashed the Raddus apart with their missile cannons seconds into the chase-

Wait, no, hang on.

That'd be why the combined fighter strength of the escort group and the Supremacy had enough time to sortie and destroy or disable the Raddus before Holdo so much as completed the turn-

Wait, no, hang on.

Hmm something seems off here.

It's almost like the FO didn't have the range or the weaponry to kill the Raddus before it closed the distance, but that can't be it...



Given that we have exactly no evidence for the above assertion because @Khaos' whole argument requires her to be aiming for the bow dead on (and at no point is this shown, stated, or implied), this idea is somewhat unconvincing to say the least.

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TBF, it could be that tFO were just brain-dead stupid. It'd fit their characterization so far.

Even moreso if whatever handwaveium the novelisation introduces to explain why no-one does this tactic is something really basic that tFO just forgot to turn on like their anti-stealth scanner.

 

[RoboRenee]

People seem to forget that the Order detected her turning the hyper drive on, meaning that if your standard tactic is to do this, the enemy knows what you are doing a good thirty seconds before you do it. Meaning they can, I don't know, blow you the fuck up before you do it.

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Only if they can do it in thirty seconds.

No, it wouldn't be a magic "I win" button, but there's clearly enough value in the trick that it makes little sense we didn't see the CIS or the Rebellion or the Empire trying this before. It would have made the fight over Endor easier for the Rebellion, could have smacked down Rebellion fleet groupings, could have leveraged the immense CIS production advantage to the fullest in space by almost literally throwing money at the problem.

 

[Khaos]

Given that we have exactly no evidence for the above assertion because @Khaos' whole argument requires her to be aiming for the bow dead on (and at no point is this shown, stated, or implied), this idea is somewhat unconvincing to say the least.

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I'll admit I didn't consider the case where she aimed at a specific point 8 km to the right of the centre of the Supremacy.

 

[Claudette Savagely]

I'll admit I didn't consider the case where she aimed at a specific point 8 km to the right of the centre of the Supremacy.

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Why would she need to be ultra super pin point accurate and hit the bow, though? Why would hitting the point of greatest length-ways thickness be desirable? Why should anyone hold your central and basically unsupported assumption to be true?

 

[Red_Five]

So she missed, except she didn't miss.

???

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The Supremacy was not destroyed. She only hit because it was an obnoxiously wide ship.

 

[Khaos]

Why would she need to be ultra super pin point accurate and hit the bow, though? Why would hitting the point of greatest length-ways thickness be desirable? Why should anyone hold your central and basically unsupported assumption to be true?

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If she's confident about the accuracy of her jump/collision, then she aimed at somewhere right of the centre of the supremacy.

If she's not that confident about the accuracy of her jump/collision, it makes sense to aim dead centre because there's more stuff to the left and to the right to hit into even if the jump/collision misses by some degree.

 

[Red_Five]

Let's not forget that the movie is premised on the First Order being dumb.

Why were their fighters not scrambled when Poe first showed up at the beginning of the film.

Why was Kylo and his squadrons pulled back when the Raddus tried to speed away? He already destroyed the majority of the Resistance's fighters and the bridge of the Raddus was destroyed. That was the perfect time for the fighters to start pelting the Raddus' engines. Who cares if the TIEs run out of fuel, they would just be picked up by the Supremacy or one of its escorts soon enough.

Why did Hux nor order some of its escort Star Destroyers to hyper space ahead of the Raddus? It was virtually undefended on the front arc, as everything was put to the rear shields.

 

[Kokurokoki]

Honestly, there are good criticisms to be made about the new Star Wars movies but the one about the Sueness of Rey aren't among them : Force users, in general, do impossible things without training, when they do train they hone those abilities and gain a measure of control on their use. The more exceptionally attuned you are to the Force the more absurd you are. From Anakin to Rey that hasn't changed. I think it's just to say that generally the "power level" for lack of a better word, of the characters get higher as more films are released and that Rey but more blatantly Kylo who fucking stop blaster fire with his mind, are perhaps more obviously powerful than previous characters of the Franchise but neither one represent some kind of anomaly.

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Uhhh no. That's just flat out wrong.

Anakin was incredibly powerful with the force, but that only got him so far. To become one of the greatest Jedi and later the most feared Sith in the galaxy he had to work for it for years. If he was written like Rey was in the new trilogy, he wouldn't have lost against Dooku in the second film. And Anakin has continuously developed his skill over the years of the Clone Wars through accumulation of battle experience and training and meditation that he does in his spare time. I believe the Clone Wars TV series also established that Force Ghosts weren't yet a thing until Yoda was able to discover it with the assistance of Qui-Gon and gain greater understanding of the force which he passed on to Luke to help him with his training.

Luke is supposedly even more powerful than Vader with the Force, and it was shown that he still needed to train and study for years before he was ready to take Vader on. This is reinforced in ESB where he challenges Vader before he is ready and gets toyed around with and treated like child's play. If he was written like Rey he would have roflstomped Vader in the first five seconds of the film. Let's not forget that in the first film he is strong with the Force, but he needed Kenobi to guide him as a force ghost. He receives a lot of training and assistance from masters with far more foresight than Anakin did regarding the Force, which in combination with his natural affinity with the Force allowed him to train himself quickly so that he was ready to confront Vader. Despite this however he still had to train for over 4 years before he was ready to confront the Emperor and Vader.

In the meantime throughout the entirety of TFA, Rey is essentially just yolo'ing with the force and no training and suddenly pulling out powers she's never heard of before after just seeing/experiencing them once. If Luke or Anakin tried that in their respective stories they would have died very early on or caused the death of their friends. In TLJ she apparently trains with Luke for 2 days and now she can suddenly fight better than Kylo Ren who has been trained all his life and can best Snoke's elite guard in combat. And from what I've gathered on the net, only a few weeks pass throughout the entirety of the current new trilogy.



I also find that people trying to defend the movie and dismiss criticism under the arguments of "oh you guys just don't like female protagonists" is incredibly disingenuous and completely ignores the bad writing shoehorned into an unnecessary film series that exists solely to print money.

 

[Ser_Serendipity]

In TLJ she apparently trains with Luke for 2 days and now she can suddenly fight better than Kylo Ren who has been trained all his life and can best Snoke's elite guard in combat.

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What? No. The choreography of that scene is very clear: Rey's got a lot of energy but no finesse. Ben kills more guards in less time than her, and doesn't even get injured like she does.

Like, putting aside all the other silliness about Rey being able to beat Vader or whatever. It's clear from what we see in the films that the Rey at the end of TLJ would be destroyed by Vader, no contest.

 

[Red_Five]

Anakin was incredibly powerful with the force, but that only got him so far. To become one of the greatest Jedi and later the most feared Sith in the galaxy he had to work for it for years. If he was written like Rey was in the new trilogy, he wouldn't have lost against Dooku in the second film. And Anakin has continuously developed his skill over the years of the Clone Wars through accumulation of battle experience and training and meditation that he does in his spare time.

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Anakin did not fight Dooku after he got shot with a bowcaster, or after Dooku was emotionally and spiritually wrenched after killed his own father. Dooku was also fully committed to the Dark Side, something Ben never was. Dooku was also a master Swordsmen with decades of actual, practical experience. Dooku was only rivaled by the likes of Yoda and Mace Windu.

Compared to that, Ben is a child in a mask, pretending to be something he is not.

Luke is supposedly even more powerful than Vader with the Force, and it was shown that he still needed to train and study for years before he was ready to take Vader on. This is reinforced in ESB where he challenges Vader before he is ready and gets toyed around with and treated like child's play. If he was written like Rey he would have roflstomped Vader in the first five seconds of the film. Let's not forget that in the first film he is strong with the Force, but he needed Kenobi to guide him as a force ghost. He receives a lot of training and assistance from masters with far more foresight than Anakin did regarding the Force, which in combination with his natural affinity with the Force allowed him to train himself quickly so that he was ready to confront Vader.

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No one is more powerful than Anakin in terms of raw, unadulterated Force potential. Luke, while being second to Vader, was still head and shoulders above the other good guys in terms of raw Force potential. A big reason Luke is able to overcome Vader is the fact that Vader is old and damaged beyond repair. His injuries held him back from meeting his full potential. Additionally, Vader was wracked with regret about what he had done and was teetering on being redeemed for a while.

In the meantime throughout the entirety of TFA, Rey is essentially just yolo'ing with the force and no training and suddenly pulling out powers she's never heard of before after just seeing/experiencing them once. If Luke or Anakin tried that in their respective stories they would have died very early on or caused the death of their friends. In TLJ she apparently trains with Luke for 2 days and now she can suddenly fight better than Kylo Ren who has been trained all his life and can best Snoke's elite guard in combat.

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You need to re-watch that fight. Kylo is constantly taking on 2 or 3 guards. Rey, for the majority of the fight, is battling 1 guy and struggling quite a bit. Of course, you are also assuming Ben is a great swordsman, which he may very well not be. I mean when does he ever fight other force users with his saber? The collective knowledge and experience of Lightsaber dueling pretty much died when the Sith destroyed the Jedi and the Sith were destroyed by Luke and Vader. After that, its pretty much just been dudes with glow sticks whacking each other.

 

[Claudette Savagely]

The Supremacy was not destroyed. She only hit because it was an obnoxiously wide ship.

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It wasn't rendered into vapour, it was just cut in completely half and made almost totally militarily useless.

As for the second sentence, please show me where the film even implies it.

If she's confident about the accuracy of her jump/collision, then she aimed at somewhere right of the centre of the supremacy.

If she's not that confident about the accuracy of her jump/collision, it makes sense to aim dead centre because there's more stuff to the left and to the right to hit into even if the jump/collision misses by some degree.

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You didn't actually answer any of the questions I posed in the post you quoted.

Please consider doing so, that this conversation doesn't devolve into you asserting things without evidence and me pointing this out ad infinitum.

 

[Jace911]

Uhhh no. That's just flat out wrong.

Anakin was incredibly powerful with the force, but that only got him so far. To become one of the greatest Jedi and later the most feared Sith in the galaxy he had to work for it for years. If he was written like Rey was in the new trilogy, he wouldn't have lost against Dooku in the second film. And Anakin has continuously developed his skill over the years of the Clone Wars through accumulation of battle experience and training and meditation that he does in his spare time.

Luke is supposedly even more powerful than Vader with the Force, and it was shown that he still needed to train and study for years before he was ready to take Vader on. This is reinforced in ESB where he challenges Vader before he is ready and gets toyed around with and treated like child's play. If he was written like Rey he would have roflstomped Vader in the first five seconds of the film. Let's not forget that in the first film he is strong with the Force, but he needed Kenobi to guide him as a force ghost. He receives a lot of training and assistance from masters with far more foresight than Anakin did regarding the Force, which in combination with his natural affinity with the Force allowed him to train himself quickly so that he was ready to confront Vader.

In the meantime throughout the entirety of TFA, Rey is essentially just yolo'ing with the force and no training and suddenly pulling out powers she's never heard of before after just seeing/experiencing them once. If Luke or Anakin tried that in their respective stories they would have died very early on or caused the death of their friends. In TLJ she apparently trains with Luke for 2 days and now she can suddenly fight better than Kylo Ren who has been trained all his life and can best Snoke's elite guard in combat.



I also find that people trying to defend the movie and dismiss criticism under the arguments of "oh you guys just don't like female protagonists" is incredibly disingenuous and completely ignores the bad writing shoehorned into an unnecessary film series that exists solely to print money.

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Anakin falls ass backwards into a Naboo fighter, pilots it through a deadly battle, and literally "oopsies" an enemy command ship. At 8. This is fine.

Anakin, at 23, successfully lands the front half of a capital ship that is not designed to enter atmosphere and has no engines. This is fine.

Luke, at 19, climbs into an X-wing he's never touched and outflies trained Imperial pilots alongside actual veteran Rebels and then proceeds to blow up the Death Star. This is fine.

Luke, at 23, pulls the lightsaber to him from the snow even though Obi-wan never showed him or the audience that telekinesis was a thing Jedi could do let alone how to do it. This is fine.

Luke, at 23, spends an afternoon giving Yoda piggyback rides and is then able to hold his own and even injure Darth Vader, slayer of the Jedi and Ben Kenobi, in their very first duel. This is fine.

Rey, at 18ish, flies the Falcon to escape two TIE fighters. This is completely unreasonable because *fart sounds*

Rey, at 18ish, fixes a part on the Millennium Falcon and impresses Han Solo. Rey, whose entire livelihood revolves around pulling ships apart to sell them for scrap. Rey, who has walked past the Falcon every day for years watching Unkar Platt modify it, while Han Solo, who couldn't fix his own goddamn ship in Empire when the hyperdrive was busted the entire goddamn movie, has not seen it in years. This is absolutely absurd somehow.

Rey, at 18ish, is able to replicate Kylo Ren's mind trick on him after having it demonstrated on her twice. Rey, having trained herself to fight her entire life as protection from other scavengers, is then able to take a lightsaber and defeat Kylo Ren after he has been gutshot by a bowcaster that hits like a goddamn mortar, after he has killed his own father and is severely unbalanced. This doesn't make sense because *shrug emoji*

Rey, at 18ish, spends about two days listening to grumpy Luke talk about the Force and practicing with a lightsaber in her spare time. She is then able to kill a bunch of randos with swords alongside Kylo Ren, though she has a difficult time with them. This is for arcane reasons bullshit.

The more people insist that their issues with Rey have nothing to do with her gender the less and less I believe them, because there is transparently nothing else to object to if you aren't willfully deluded.

 

[Artificial Girl]

People don't use hyperspace rams for the same reason that we don't tell our pilots to fly their aircraft into enemy aircraft carriers.

It's wasteful and stupid.

Plus the window to successfully hit something while jumping to lightspeed seems pretty small. You have to be (relatively) close to your target and also be able to reliably hit your target.

Anyway, if people in Star Wars thought that building hyperspace rams was a good idea, they'd do it. But they clearly don't for reasons.